Portrait of Johan Bollen

Johan Bollen

Complex Systems Researcher
Born: November 5, 1971

Johan Lambert Trudo Maria Bollen is a scientist investigating complex systems and networks, the relation between social media and a variety of socio-economic phenomena such as the financial markets, public health, and social well-being, as well as Science of Science with a focus on impact metrics derived from usage data. He presently works as associate professor at the Indiana University School of Informatics of Indiana University Bloomington and a fellow at the SparcS Institute of Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. He is best known for his work on scholarly impact metrics, measuring public well-being from large-scale social media data, and correlating Twitter mood to stock market prices. He has taught courses on data mining, information retrieval, and digital libraries. His research has been funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Science Foundation, Library of Congress, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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Mentioned in 3 documents

Shima Beigi and Francis Heylighen

Noospheric Consciousness

The world-wide web has been conceptualized as a global brain for humanity due to its neural network-like organization. To determine whether this global brain could exhibit features associated with consciousness, we review three neuroscientific theories of consciousness: information integration, adaptive resonance and global workspace. These theories propose that conscious states are characterized by a globally circulating, resonant pattern of activity that is sufficiently coherent to be examined and reflected upon. We then propose a correspondence between this notion and Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere as a forum for collective thinking, and explore some implications of this self-organizing dynamics for the evolution of shared, global understanding.

Francis Heylighen

The Global Superorganism

The organismic view of society is updated by incorporating concepts from cybernetics, evolutionary theory, and complex adaptive systems. Global society can be seen as an autopoietic network of self-producing components, and therefore as a living system or “superorganism”.

Ben Goertzel

World Wide Brain

Ben Goertzel says the Internet is evolving towards a “global Web mind”–an emergent, distributed intelligence surpassing human capabilities. This development, grounded in complexity science, could solve AI’s scalability issues and merge humanity with technology. While potentially solving global problems, it raises concerns about individual freedom. Drawing parallels with spiritual concepts like the noösphere and collective unconscious, this evolution is seen as inevitable and transformative. As we nurture this new form of life, we stand at the threshold of a profound shift in human consciousness and global interconnectedness.